A needed fix to the Voting Rights Act

Express-News Editorial Board

Updated 12:00 am, Saturday, January 25, 2014

SAN ANTONIO — The anti-democratic tactics that motivated the Voting Rights Act in 1965 have morphed into methods cleverly camouflaged but with the same discriminatory effects. The act is still all too necessary.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June gutted a key provision of the act.

Texas is the poster boy for why that was to civil rights what a jack hammer is to a block of concrete. Freed of the need to get changes in voting law precleared — because of its history of thwarting minorities at the polls — Texas quickly put its voter ID law into effect. This, despite a federal court ruling that the law intentionally discriminated. It then rushed the Legislature to approve allegedly new-and-improved redistricting maps, which were substantively based on plans another court said also discriminated.

The haste was opportunistic, dismissive of court judgment and motivated by a desire to entrench partisan political power. But, when a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling struck down the section of the act that spelled out the formula for which states were subject to preclearance, it allowed as how Congress could remedy this.

Three members committed to voting rights have now introduced legislation that creates a new formula in the act. The authors are Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and John Conyers, D-Mich., and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Five or more voting rights violations during the previous 15 calendar years would trigger preclearance. It's instructive that even under this relaxed standard, Texas would require preclearance, along with Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Smaller political subdivisions within states trigger preclearance if they have at least three voting rights violations in the previous 15 calendar years or one violation and “persistent, extremely low minority turnout” in those 15 years.

It is an imperfect formula. Violations based on voter ID laws will not count — to make the bill more tolerable for Republicans. This is tantamount to saying all crimes count against a felon except one of his most egregious. Courts are a proper setting for determining when a measure violates rights.

But even as is, this proposed formula improves on the wreckage left by the Supreme Court. It also improves the act's Section 3; preclearance can occur whether or not the violation is intentional.

The Voting Rights Act should be able to block discrimination
before it is inflicted.